The millions of people in the United States who are denied equal
rights because they are immigrants have vast stockpiles of wisdom and
rich culture to share; they engage in more strategic and courageous
activism than do non-immigrants; and without any doubt they would vote
better than do the "legal" people of South Carolina if only they were
permitted to vote. The mistreatment of these people shortchanges every
U.S. enterprise and reduces civil rights, paychecks, public safety,
sense of community, and basic levels of morality for everyone.

Read Lives in Limbo by Roberto G. Gonzales. Kids brought to
the United States by their parents (driven by NAFTA or U.S.-backed coups
or drug wars or just the general injustice of rich nations toward poor)
often live in a segregated and impoverished world. But they attend U.S.
schools, speak English, and have largely the same Dreamy expectations
for their American futures as anyone else. In adolescence, they
transition not just into adulthood but also into illegality. Most of
these young people find out that doors are closed, that college will not
include them, that employers will not hire them, and that at any moment
they may be yanked right out of their lives and deported alone to a
world they do not know.

The United States is famous for failing its teenagers. But imagine
adding to the problems that a typical teenager faces the imposition of a
second-class status and the prospect of being locked up at any moment.
Teens in poor, African-American neighborhoods face serious
discrimination and police harassment, and may be able to relate. But
those of us who had many advantages and still had a hard time coming
through to adulthood ought to be able to understand, as well, the tragic
stories Gonzales tells of U.S. teens discarded by the United States.

In the exceptional cases, where the doors to college are opened,
lives can be transformed. Free college for all would not just help
create an intelligent and caring world, and not just crush the prospects
of military recruiters. It would also radically re-shape the worldviews
of immigrant teenagers.

Susan Eaton's new book, Integration Nation: Immigrants, Refugees, and America at Its Best
shows what's possible in towns, cities, and states where people come to
their senses, reject apartheid, and start behaving decently toward each
other. As states have enacted cruel new laws, cities have appealed to
immigrants to come and share in urban revitalization. Smarter states
have begun allowing all immigrants to pay in-state tuition, as well as
to obtain driver's licenses. And numerous localities have begun finding
ways to benefit from what immigrants have to offer.

Schools in Utah have taken the lead in two-way immersion. Spanish and
English speaking students spend half the school day immersed in Spanish
and half in English. Both groups of students are valued for their
expertise and provide assistance to the other. Both groups excel
academically. And they tend to become, socially, much more of a single
group of friends -- a process of integration that extends to their
parents as well. Bilingualism is good for your brain and good for your
understanding of the world. If your monolingual English-speaking
children are attending school with lots of Spanish-speaking children,
why would you deny them the advantage of learning that language? Sadly,
most places do. Eaton suggests that one of several reasons for Utah's
relative enlightenment may be that its Mormon missionaries have spent
considerable time living outside the United States. It's hard to imagine
anything that could better benefit the United States than for more
people to have done that.

Eaton writes that Prince William County, Va., Farmer's Branch, Texas,
Hazleton, Penn., and other localities that have sought to keep out
immigrants have suffered economically, whereas cities, including
Philadelphia, that have welcomed them have benefitted. Eaton's book
looks at projects around the United States that have given immigrants a
chance to contribute, including the training of multiple-language
speakers in Boston as medical interpreters for patients. Participants in
that program say they appreciate not so much the dramatically increased
income their new job as an interpreter provides, but primarily the
sense that people value something they have to give.

Little as I'm able to value Duke University's basketball team, and
few as will be the tears I'll shed when Virginia beats it again, Eaton
reports on a remarkably good initiative that came from Duke's Center for
International Studies. Because immigrants were effectively allowed to
live and work and earn income and pay taxes in Durham, but not permitted
to do all kinds of other things, including to create bank accounts or
drive cars, easy targets for robberies were Latinos walking with their
pockets full of cash. That changed, crime dropped, property values
climbed, and all sorts of other benefits resulted when the Latino
Community Credit Union was created. Not only were people allowed to
deposit and withdraw their money, but they became able to access small
non-predatory loans -- not quite the economic boost of being born with
Donald Trump's father, but transformative nonetheless.

In Mississippi, Eaton recounts, the pushback against the latest wave
of anti-immigrant laws has come from African-American leaders, and from
organizers who have identified the civil rights struggle of the 20th
century with that of the 21st.

In Hazleton, Penn., the Hazleton Integration Project has pushed back
impressively against the bigotry that swept through the town a decade
back. Its success has come through bringing people together, including
in a new community center, and offering them all opportunities for
better things together as one community.

Perhaps it's too much to dream, but if such community building
efforts ultimately succeed in persuading large numbers of people to stop
blaming immigrants for the shortcomings of their society, the next step
could be accurately placing the blame on the oligarchs who actually are
responsible. If that day ever comes, the natives are going to want to
ask the immigrants how one starts a real movement for change.

David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union." He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online (more...)

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